The Little Shop
by Alfie und Micky
Summary: 1st fanfiction! What if the ninth Doctor had never met Rose, and the tenth Doctor was just meeting her for the first time?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: 'Doctor Who' and its related characters and incidences are the property of the BBC and others; not me.

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The Doctor walked down the street all alone, wishing he had someone to babble on to. Along the way, he passed a little shop. He loved little shops, so he stepped inside. Inside the shop, it was pretty deserted. The only other person in the little shop with him was a girl with blonde hair and brown eyes. She had a confused look on her face like why was he in here: this was a women's clothes store. "Excuse me, what's the date?" he asked.

"Not another drunk!" she said as she picked up a pistol from under the counter and blew his hat off with a jet of water.

Ah, it was a water pistol!

How delightful!

But perhaps, he thought, he ought to take it as his cue to leave.

"Actually, you know what, I think you and I, young lady, got off on the wrong foot. I am the Doctor. Now, if you'd care to tell me your name, I think that would be lovely."

"Unless you'd care to do the same, sir, I cannot say that it would be so lovely," she said as she loaded the pistol again. "If you're _the Doctor_, then I'm Catwoman!" she added sarcastically, and fired a warning jet of water close to his ear.

On sudden inspiration, she held a hand up to her ear and laughed, blurting, "No furry ears!" Managing to reign her laughter in, she said, "Anyway, what sort of a doctor, mister?"

"Well, I'm actually sort of a doctor of... well, I'd have to say a little bit of everything, in honesty," he rambled.

Nodding, she pointed to the door – he was to go straight to the door, and kindly leave her shop! "I don't think so, somehow, mister."

Suddenly, she turned her head and squinted her eyes up, staring hard at the back of the shop. All of a sudden, he could hear laughter and the chink of china; he had a feeling, too, that he wasn't the only one hearing the strange noises.

"You see," she said absently, "here's the thing, Doctorman, I've been hearing that same laughter and chatty so-and-sos for quite some time now, but, well, as I say, here's the thing: when I go out to the back room, the sound will seem to be coming from the other side of the door, the back door, but outside that door is only the alleyway and an old factory that doesn't run anymore, and hasn't, I am afraid, done so for quite a many years. What I mean to say is, Doctorman, that being a doctor of 'a little bit of everything' this should be right up your alley, shouldn't it?"

"Yes, actually," he said, already leaning in the direction of the aforementioned back room. "Come on!" he chimed excitedly, as he started off.


	2. Chapter 2

As they walked down the alleyway, it became quieter and quieter until they could finally make out the sound of their footsteps. The blonde young woman held the water pistol at the ready; she'd since filled it with soda.

Halfway to the abandoned factory, the Doctor spotted a cat that was passing by and leant down and scooped it up into his arms. "How about we hear that name now, young woman?"

As she was about to reply, the cat leapt from the Doctor's arms and raced away in pursuit of some small, furry prey.

At length, the young woman replied, "Rose Tyler, sir."

"If you insist on knowing my name, I have been known to go by John Smith, on certain occasions," the Doctor said.

Rose Tyler smiled, nodding at him ever so slightly. Well, that had hardly been the arduous ordeal he'd envisaged at all, had it, now?

Catching her smile, the Doctor smiled also, and it was at that point that the pair, both wearing bright smiles, paused and stopped before the door to the abandoned factory, which was now quite as silent as a graveyard.

"After you, good sir," Rose chirped happily.

Surprisingly, when the Doctor tried the doorknob, it was to find the door unlocked. _How very curious?_ he thought. _How very curious indeed?_ Pulling the door open, the Doctor nodded for Rose to go before him – "No, after you, milady!" – then spun about with a flourish to join her inside the building.

As if by magic – and quite spookily, in Rose's subdued opinion – the door that had moments earlier stood open, allowing daylight to stream merrily in after the curious pair, sprang shut after them.

Suppressing a shiver, Rose shot a glance of unvoiced apprehension the Doctor's way. "Ah, John, this would be the moment – were we featuring in a Mills & Boon romance novel – where you, the hero, assured me, the heroine, that there was absolutely nothing wrong!"

"Come on, then!" the Doctor replied jovially.

"You're not going to reassure me?" she asked.

"Whenever there's danger, I'm there to defend the helpless, the ignorant, women and children… men-"

A high peel of laughter rose from Rose's throat, her eyes sparkling in amusement.

Clang! Bang! Clank!

Rose's laughter died, suddenly, and she lurched toward the Doctor, gripping his arm tightly. "What was that?"


	3. Chapter 3

Narrowing his eyes, the Doctor peered through the gloom, his apprehension mounting. He shouldn't have allowed the human to come along. He'd been excited about the mystery, and he hadn't been thinking straight. She was just a child, in reality. Though she might well have been eighteen or nineteen, he was more than eight hundred years older than her, and he had no excuses. If anything was to happen to her, he'd never forgive himself, and her family, he thought, wasn't likely to, either.

No, it had been a foolish mistake, made out of loneliness and the extents he often went to to stave off boredom.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the outline of some form of apparatus, and, as his eyes adjusted to the low light, he realized - looking at all of the knobs and buttons and funny-shaped bits - what it must be. Someone was trying to build a machine by which to open a pathway, but it wasn't just any pathway they'd been trying to open, it was a pathway between dimensions. Hence the sounds Rose and he had heard earlier: they must have been testing the thing.

It was clearly worse than he'd first feared, and certainly no longer a joking matter.

And definitely, most certainly, aliens!

"I can't see anything," Rose whispered, from her spot beside him. She'd hardly moved a muscle since they'd heard the banging, clanking noises.

He refrained from shrugging, and supposed it might have been the machine. He'd just begun to feel the first twinges of annoyance that his eyes were taking longer than usual to adjust to the darkness, when it occurred to him that the darkness mightn't have been regular darkness: it might well have been engineered somehow.

Cripes, if that were the case, he didn't think they were going to like it at all when they finally came up against the aliens behind this.

They'd obviously anticipated the prospect of intruders and set down the appropriate measures to deal with them when they cropped up.

_Not good, not good._

_You don't want to unduly alarm the human child, Doctor_, he reminded himself. _Perhaps it might be possible to go back, deposit of the child safely out of harm's way, and return after having run some thorough scans._

"Well, well," a voice reached towards them as though from very far away, bouncing back and forth (between far away and too close) at odd intervals. "That would be all fine and dandy, now, wouldn't it, but, you see, you are intruders, and you are on _our_ turf now. In our house, you play by our rules; you don't make them up as you go, I'm afraid."

Rose clung tightly to the Doctor's arm, still as a stone.

"If you value your lives," the voice advised, "you will remain exactly where you are."

"I'm _not_ moving," Rose hissed almost silently. "How can I move? I can't _see_ a thing!"

"Tut, tut!" the voice replied, as if it had somehow heard. "And you will make not a peep. Not even a _wee_ peep. If you value your lives."

_Yes, you already pointed that out_, the Doctor thought, but he didn't make a peep.


	4. Chapter 4

"I'm a visitor to this planet, too," the Doctor ventured. Yes, yes, they'd been told not to speak, but he couldn't help it, really. The banging, clanking noises had started up again, and they put him on edge. He had to do something - just _some_thing! "I may be able to help you, if you tell me what the problem is?"

The voice laughed menacingly. "My, my! It seems the male has a death wish!" it mocked.

"Ah, tsh! I'm _old_! Older than you'd think, at first glance," the Doctor told the voice. "When you get to my age, you've got a couple of options: you either accept the fact that you're old and, therefore, you're past your prime, or you throw caution to the wind and take heart that you _are_ still alive - and _live_!"

The voice gave a gravelly laugh, the sound echoing strangely in the dark room.

Rose's hand found the Doctor's arm and she gave it a squeeze as though to silently say, "Hey, you, crazy man - I don't want to die! Why are you provoking this guy... thing?"

"It's okay," the Doctor told Rose calmly. "Our friend here needs me. You see, he can't get his machine to work properly. But, tsh, how would _I_ know that? That, my dear, is precisely why you kept hearing those _strange_ noises."

"Just for the record," Rose piped up, finally, "_I don't_ want to die. Then why am I running me mouth when you said 'Silence, Earthlings!'? That's a very good question. A very good question. I'm not stalling for time, at all. No, nope, I am not. I'm... I'm backing up this bloke. He's... clever. Like, real clever. He can help, if you give him a chance. And, really, we don't mean you any harm - none! We're here to help! That's why we popped over here for a looksie, see. We thought someone might be in trouble and needin' our help."

"_I_ don't need _your_ help!" the voice sneered, almost as though amused that Rose would even suggest such a thing.

"'I,'" the Doctor repeated. "Oh, I see. You're alone. It's just you! That's... lonely." His voice brightened, "Let us help you! I can help! It's what I do! I _help_!"

"You are not of this world?" the voice asked, a weary note straining to reach their ears through the strange, induced darkness.

"No. I'm a visitor, like you are. And a friend, I hope. Just let me help, please. You say you're a visitor?"

"Not intentionally," the voice replied tiredly.

"What went wrong? How did you end up here? Why this machine? What does it do?"

"So many questions."

"Yes, a lot of questions. Lots of questions. I've always got lots of questions. That's why I travel. To meet new lifeforms, learn new things."

The voice seemed to sigh, and the sigh rippled through the artificial darkness, vibrating the air as it passed through it, to their ears. "My cruiser ship was flying through the Deltarex Galaxy with myself and my family on-board, when it suddenly lost control and we flew into a dying star," it explained.

"I'm sorry. But what's the point of the inter-dimensional machine? You're trying to establish a pathway to another dimension, but why?"

"My cruiser's collision with that dying star and the resulting energy burst interacting with the cruiser's drive transported me to another dimension," the voice replied. "I'm tired. I want to get home. I want to see my family again."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, his voice tinged with sadness, "but you didn't get transported into a different dimension. I'm so sorry. What you experienced was a time paradox. You were thrown through time and ended up here, on Earth, in the 21st Century."

"I don't believe it! Time travel! And what of my family? Were they also transported to another time and place?"

"I'm sorry, but it's a miracle you survived at all."

Rose swallowed the urge to say something. She couldn't believe that all the Doctor could say was how sorry he was, or that time travel was possible, or that the only words she'd be able to come up with, in his place, were that she was sorry, too.

"Please, shut off the machine," the Doctor appealed.

With a heavy sigh, the voice consented. "There's not much point to it, anymore, if it won't take me home."

"No. I'm sorry. Ah! The dark! The dark - it's a defence mechanism! What is it called again, a Shadow Guard!"

"Hmm. I shall disable the Guard now."

"Thank you."

"Hmm..."

The darkness seemed to shift and Rose fought the urge to bat it away, it felt funny, and little pockets of light opened up in the black, like bubbles in a lava lamp, and then it was daytime, once more, as it had been all along, and Rose finally saw who they'd been talking to-

The Doctor clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream. It was... it was a lizard! A huge talking lizard!

How odd was that?

"Thaaaat's... different!" she said, as she took the Doctor's hand away from her mouth.

"You look 'different' to him, too, you know," the Doctor said.

"Oh, I'll bet, stranger!" Addressing the lizard man, now, she asked, "I'm Rose. What's your name?"

"Sephen Amelox Menyvo."

"Sephen. You never quite know who you're going to meet, 'round here, Sephen, but ya gotta love it!"

"Sephen, I can take you home," the Doctor told him.

"You have a vessel capable of inter-stellar travel?" Sephen asked.

"Yes. Oh, yes!"

Sephen sighed heavily. "Thank you," he said.

"Travel... amongst the stars?" Rose asked suddenly, catching the Doctor's eye. "Oh, this I have to see! Mind if I tag along for a bitsie, mister?"

"Not at all!" he returned, with a grin.

Yep, this guy was _in_sane! But the good kind of insane. And she'd rather started to wonder: if Lizard Men existed, then maybe the Doctor wasn't telling such a tall tale, after all. Maybe he could travel amongst the stars.

No way could she turn that down!

She beamed back at this funny stranger who'd just dropped into her life one day, unannounced, with all sorts of crazy notions and crazy, exciting promises. "Sign me up, Doctor! I'm locked and loaded and _ready to roll_!"

Maybe not her best line, she thought, but, hey, she'd have plenty of time to perfect her one-liners on-board the Doctor's ship.

"Say it's fast!"

"She's fast!"

"Great!" She turned to Sephen with a smile. "Sephen, you'll be home in no time! Hey, you want some help packing that clangy-bangy thing up?"

"That would be very much appreciated, thank you," Sephen replied, and Rose bounded over eagerly to help him get the machine packed away and ready for transport.

The End


End file.
